Prison Break for Citizens

Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher, social reformer and an ultimate champion of utilitarianism, conceived the architectural plan for a structure called Panopticon, a 12-sided polygon, formed in iron and sheathed in glass to create the effect of “universal transparency”. The Cellular Jail in Andamans, a perfect example of this architecture, has seven wings of three levels each, with the seven corridors intersecting at a central guard tower with wide windows. The design was meant to have minimum guards to keep watch on maximum number of inmates of the prison. The Panopticon design won many accolades and awards for Bentham, and is used even today, as in the Central Jail at Bangalore.

Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism believed that prison inmates deserve no privacy. There were prisons constructed with transparent walls and roof, taking this concept to the extremes. By design, the cells at the Andaman Jail (appropriately called Kaala Paani – Black Waters) were as small as 12 square meters. Every cell was fully visible from the central Watch Tower.

No place to hide. Jeremy Bentham famously asked: “The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?”

The suffering comes from being watched 24 / 7 / 365, providing total control to the observer. A power that is (i) Visible with every inmate seeing, from his tiny cell window, the huge, imposing watch tower; and (ii) Unverifiable because the inmate will never know if he is being looked at any given moment, but can be sure that maybe he is being looked at.

The Panopticon is a metaphor for a society that is watched all the time by a central authority, who chooses when to watch you, to see whatever it wants to see, and act on the authority that this information bestows on the Central Watch Tower.

The current world is an Information Panopticon.

Companies know when an employee logged in, the transactions she performed, and all parameters to do with her quantity and quality of work. Product and services are statistics available to the producers, and the consumers need not know or approve of the data being collected about them. Governments are clumsily shoving themselves and their footprints all over the spaces used or occupied by their citizens.

The Panopticon, as a thought, from the physical structure to the information-based edifice of today, has a long history. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the human body became the central problem of production, and “employers needed to regulate, direct, constrain, anchor, and channel bodily energies for the purposes of sustained, often repetitive, productive activity” (words of Soshana Zuboff in her book In The Age Of The Smart Machine). Our companies are still stuck in this mode, made popular by that much-hated maverick, Frederick Taylor.

French philosopher Michael Foucalt points out that these methods of industrial management laid the groundwork for a new kind of society, one in which “discipline, regulation and surveillance are taken for granted”.

The Supreme Court’s judgment on Privacy as a fundamental right mentions autonomy as something that every citizen must have. What does autonomy mean? Autonomy is the anti-thesis of the Panopticon. Having Autonomy (as an employee, a consumer or as a citizen) means letting others know as much about us as we want them to know. No more, no less. As Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan puts it, “The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.”

The parameters to define Autonomy are Pace, Presence and Preference. Pace will let me, and only me decide what I do where, when (time and frequency) and how much. Presence is revealing my whereabouts at my pleasure, and the right to have sanctuaries (homes) where I can go invisible. Preferences are about any law-abiding citizen not being questioned about any of her lifestyle choices.

India’s Supreme Court is in full agreement with Jeremy Bentham who says: “It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual.”

Ramesh is a Corporate Speaker for Leadership and Strategic Meets. Ramesh’s approach and style are largely to do with interpreting and elaborating the factors that affect organisations, trends in the industry that the companies need to watch out for and the methods that they can use to achieve their goals.